Grice: Conversational Maxims and Rationality

-- by JLS
---- for the GC

WHAT FOLLOWS ARE MAINLY EXCERPT FROM WHAT I call Kasher No. 5 -- cfr. Chanel No. 5 -- i.e. Kasher's expensive volume "Implicature" in the Concepts of Pragmatics Series. Kasher is NOT an Anglo-Saxon philosopher, and Grice was, and Kasher does NOT teach in an Anglo-Saxon university, and Grice did. Therefore, Kasher WILL not be discussed freely by Anglo-Saxon philosophers, but I will. It's not I'm wedded to Kasher, but I'm revising stuff at the Swimming-Pool Library and come across his full essay, which he later repr. in the "Implicature" volume. Since a recent M.Sc. thesis online makes a good study of Kasher and Hintikka on Grice as 'rational' philosopher, I will excert some passages (Part of my motivation is to compare Kasher's views with Kramer -- who in different commentary to this blog has expressed similar views).

In fact, I agree with Kasher whole-heartedly and have corresponded with him, and he has let me know that Grice was pretty well aware of Kasher's early reflections on this via a graduate student of Kasher's who was lately one of Grice's at Berkeley.

Kasher, like Grice, notes that the 'maxims' follow from general 'rationality' principles.

--- This is a full excerpt from Kasher's crucial p. 203 of the original essay. It echoes Grice's CP and FOUR categories:

For the General CP Kasher proposes instead:

At every stage on a way towards
achieving an end of yours, actd
as required for the achievement of the aim.

---

For the first category -- QUANTITAS in Kant/Grice:

Do not use the means you have
for achieving your ends more or less
than is required for their achievement,
ceteris paribus.

----

For the second category, QUALITAS -- recall that Grice is amusingly echoing Kant here -- nothing transcendentally true about it -- But Grice's intention to amuse -- 0one successfully carried over as far as myself is concerned -- should by no means be underestimated. Seldom Griceians are as amusing as the vintage one is.

Try to achieve your ends by the standard
use of the eans you have for their
achievement, ceteris paribus.
----

For the third category, RELATIO, Kasher has:

At every stage on a way to the achievement
of your ends, consider the means being
used by other persons to achieve their ends,
as you come to determine the manner of your
progress at that stage, ceteris paribus;
and prefer using your means in a manner which
is likely to HELP the progress of others on
their way to the achievement of their ends,
over any other use of these means, ceteris
paribus

Quite a moutful, compared to Grice's 'be relevant', but so there.

-- Finally for the fourth category of MODUS, Kasher has:

Give preference to means
which lead you to your ends
over means which lead you to situations
where achievement of the ends
themselves is just a possible result.

--- Personally, I have been able to further these considerations in my PhD dissertation --elsewhere, in the cellar --. Where I discuss each category, after a "Manuscrito" essay, along ways which make it explicit both the following of the attending maxims and their flouting.

----

Kasher finds that CP indeed follows from what he calls 'the principle of effective means' which he formulates on p. 205 as:

given a desired end, one is to choose
that action which most effectively, and at
least cost, attains that end, ceteris paribus.


Incidentally, I made Habermasian scholars aware of this, sort of. After all, my Speranza, "German Grice" (on Habermas misreading Grice) is cited in Habermas, "Pragmatics and Communication" -- in that essay, longish one, and one that I HAD to write for a seminar, loved doing it though, :)), I quote from Kasher extensively just to give Habermasian students of communicative rationality the trembles. You mention efficiency and efficacy to a reader of Habermas's two thick volumes on "The Theory of Communicative Action", which discusses Grice cursorily -- and you'll see. Habermas also dealt with Grice in more specific articles, such as "Intentional Semantics" (in Post-metaphysical Thoughts). But back to Kasher then.

For Grice's 'working out pattern' of implicature, Kasher suggests instead:

There is no reason to asusme that
the utterer is not a rational agent;
his ends and his beliefs regarding his
state, in the context of utterance
supply the justification of his behaviour.

--- For the record, Kasher cites from the 'mimeograph', which I wonder whether it would have pleased Grice.

The actual reference is thus:

Grice, H. P., 1968 [indeed, 1967] Logic and Conversation [indeed untitled, and should be quoted as "William James Lectures". 'mimeographed'. I.e. typed and made photocopies of. -- Grice was VERY reluctant to have this widespread. It was only in 1975 that he was cajoled into having the thing (lecture II) published in Davidson/Harman --, and further reprints followed (of lecture III in Cole). It was only in 1988 that he was more or less ready to submit the thing to Harvard. Sadly, he died in August 1988, and the book came out, posthumously, in 1989. Now in paperback.